Gochujang is the savory, spicy key to this easy eggplant stir-fry

It s hard but rewarding work coming up with recipes to share every week for this column. The inspiration can come from a variety of places: trends I v...

It’s hard but rewarding work coming up with recipes to share every week for this column. The inspiration can come from a variety of places: trends I’ve seen on social media, cookbooks that I wish to highlight, scientific studies and new-to-me creations from my own brain. The latter usually begins with a single ingredient, often seasonal, and then I let my culinary intuition and flavor research go from there. May I present to the court exhibit 3,894: this gochujang eggplant stir-fry.

Though the combination of eggplant and gochujang is novel to my cooking, I am, of course, not the first person to put the two together. Other cooks have thought to include fresh peppers, soy sauce and sugar to balance the heat; call for gochugaru (Korean chile flakes) instead of gochujang along with soy sauce and fish sauce; or keep the eggplant in larger pieces to top with crispy scallions. While obviously similar, each recipe is unique in its own right, whether having been inspired by dishes their authors grew up eating or, as in my case, simply based on ingredients that I think would go well together.

You can use any variety of eggplant in this recipe. Photo credit: Peggy Cormary/For The Washington Post

My recipe started with eggplant. As with just about everything in our global economy, you can of course get it year round - though you are typically relegated to the large, dark purple globe eggplants in most supermarkets. (You can also find long, slender Chinese and Japanese varieties at Asian grocery stores.) But eggplants are at their peak in the summer, along with the season’s more beloved tomatoes, stone fruit and corn. At the farmers market during these months, you are likely to come across purple-and-white striped eggplants; small, round green varieties; and milky-white specimens in different sizes.

“Despite outward appearances, you won’t find much difference once you get to the flesh inside, so don’t be afraid to experiment with or substitute varieties,” recipes editor Becky Krystal wrote in her guide to eggplant.